


a place of permanence

by secondreckoning



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angela "Mercy" Ziegler is an Angel, Angels, Blood Magic, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, F/F, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Non-Explicit Sex, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 04:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17780972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondreckoning/pseuds/secondreckoning
Summary: Fareeha Amari is a former soldier with a special connection to a certain angel. Angela Ziegler is an angel with a special connection to a certain former soldier.Their lives weave together and apart, the circumstances never quite right, until gravely wounded and on the run, Angela seeks out Fareeha for aid.(Piece for the 2019 Overwatch Femslash Big Bang)





	a place of permanence

Fareeha Amari’s into her third week at her father’s cabin. Holed up amongst the mountain hemlock and Sitka spruce and red cedars. _Reflecting_.

Six years ago, Fareeha met an honest-to-goodness angel who upended her life.

Two years ago, her mother died. Someone finally bested Ana Amari, distinguished special ops soldier. Enemy sniper, Fareeha learned. Shot in the face. A violent death, but then again, soldiers aren’t known for slipping away in their sleep. Given both her mother’s service and Fareeha’s own commendable record, she wriggled some leave to handle it. Settle affairs. Fareeha signed paperwork, closed Ana’s accounts, sent out nearly a dozen death certificates. Dazed, she packed Ana’s personal effects and shipped them to their current residence: her father, Sam’s, attic in Canada. She spent the week with her head in a fog. Did she vow to avenge her mother? Did she work to follow her footsteps? _? No — no, Fareeha’s plans were her own. Always were.

Two months ago, Fareeha received a letter. Weighing offers from renowned security companies against a restful break as her time in the Egyptian army came to a close, she opened it, unthinking. Joking with a nearby subordinate, mind off the printed sticker label or lack of logo, she tore along the envelope’s top crease and flipped the tri-folded paper open. And then her mother’s handwriting stared her in the face, eight pages of it, unspooling the entire wonderful, horrible truth to her daughter: Ana Amari was alive. Her death was fake, but the wound real. She did not know when or if she would contact her daughter again. Fareeha was not to tell Sam. Fareeha was not to tell _anyone_.

One month ago, Fareeha’s time in the army ended. They discharged her, sent her on her way. A lost soldier with no calling. She flew to Canada and her father, away from all things disorienting and Ana Amari. Lodged in a mid-range hotel, she spent her time alternating between casual dinners catching up with her father and utilizing the hotel’s complimentary fitness center. Weights, pull-ups, treadmill — anything to extinguish the spark of disquiet burning in her heart since Ana’s letter.

Three weeks ago, Fareeha caved in and asked her father for the keys to the cabin.

  _In the middle of winter?_   Sam asked. _I don’t know if there’s enough wood._

_I’ll take care of it myself_ , Fareeha responded. _I can watch out for myself. You guys raised me well._

What she can’t say is how her hotel room is too much. Not the price, no, Fareeha’s handled her finances well. But the whole of it. She’s spent the last chunk of her life in the army, caring for herself. The mini-fridge, the artfully arranged towels, the cleaning service — strangers in her personal space, making her _bed_ — it’s all too much after years of sleeping rough or in the barracks.

_All right_ , Sam caved, _It’ll need gas, but take my old truck. Don’t forget to check the well when you get out there._

And so out Fareeha went.

Three weeks among the trees, against the blue backdrop of mountains, and Fareeha’s no closer to unravelling her feelings on her mother, or on her own future.

In the particular way of winter skies, evening is sinking into night. A grey mass of clouds hangs overhead, as if considering a storm, then she blinks and darkness drenches the mountains

Fareeha reckons it’s not much past six. Dinner sits warm in her stomach, and Fareeha herself sits on the woven rug of the cabin floor, legs crossed. Meditating, or trying to. Mostly, on nights like this, she sits before the cabin’s window and chases the same old thoughts round and round. Musty drapes pulled aside, she has the sweeping wilderness, all bare trunk bases and snow in this weather, for company. Darkness settles between the trees and Fareeha rises, sick of her own mind

The cabin is all wood, inside and out, lacquered against the relentlessness of time and the elements. Everything was the same honey brown spruce: floor, walls, cabinets, chairs, trim. Over the years, the outside has worn down to an uneven greyish, but inside, among the gleam from the woodfire stove and candles (and the heavy duty solar-powered lanterns Fareeha swears by), everything gleams anew.

Fareeha sets the kettle on the stove to boil. Her mug is nearby, waiting on the small slice of counter space beside a box of chamomile tea. Fareeha set everything up her first night at the cabin. Wiped dust from dishes and cookware. Hung the linens outside and beat them, though some had sat untouched for so long that there was no removing the smell of must and the sharp cold. Put all her canned and boxed goods in the cabinets, along with a supply of root vegetables and legumes. (She can’t live solely off canned goods. Too much damned sodium.) There’s the simplest of water systems, drawn from the well, but no electricity. Most of the fabrics inside — rugs, blankets, drapery — are homey and woven, fashioned from dusky reds and browns and greens that Fareeha associates with warmth and safety.

The kettle’s whistling for her. Fareeha pours hot water over her tea bag and tears in two mint leaves. She turns and watches the window while it steeps. In the past few weeks, she has wondered if she’s actually done herself any good out here, reflecting on her mother and every scrap of memory. But it always comes down to the same hard lines: Fareeha is not happy here, not particularly, but all the other options she’s mulled over are unbearable.

Fareeha lifts her tea bag out, carries her mug to the counter and tops it off with room temperature water, then settles on the couch. A sense of calm loosens the tension between her shoulders and her eyes drift shut. With heat from the mug radiating into her hands and fragrant steam rising into the air, she’s almost at peace.

Almost.

What was she thinking, coming here? She’s spent the bulk of her life in Egypt. Summers, she’s spent _summers_ here with Sam. She ran around underfoot the summer he built and installed the new cabinets, picking up a brush thick with shellac herself at some point, a mask strapped over her nose and mouth to guard against fumes, and slopping uneven coats over her father’s handiwork.

But, fuck. It’s _cold_ here.

Fareeha is sipping at her tea and staring out at the snow-covered forest when light flares across the sky. She stands, mouth tugging into a frown, and peers up out the window at the sky.

Testing out the army’s personal jet suit, Fareeha’s seen her share of meteors. She’s spent a good amount of time under the skies. She knows a falling star isn’t a star at all, but a small meteoroid burning up on its descent through the atmosphere. She knows a meteor itself is only the flash of light beating against the sky right now, and the object itself, the meteoroid, is only space debris. Meteoroids shower earth frequently — most spark and burn to nothing in the atmosphere.

But the burning _thing_ lighting up Fareeha’s sky tonight is unlike any meteor she’s seen.

Burning incandescent against her eyes, its arc to earth slows, alters course a smidgen north-east, then struggles mid-air, and finally plummets.

Down,

_down_ ,

_down_ ,

burning all the way.

A call to action sparks inside Fareeha. She downs her tea, throat stinging, then she’s moving and preparing. She crosses a scarf around her neck, pulls on gloves, and zips herself into her heavy outdoor coat. She packs two lanterns and her sidearm, and then she’s off.

***

Angela Ziegler is dying.

Falling, and dying.

Angela is dying the way angels die: filled with grace and licked with flames, and plunging

down

down

_down—_

A gunshot burns through her left shoulder and fire eats at the edges of her wings and rides heavy between her shoulder blades.

It is night in this hemisphere, where she is falling. Cloudless above and below. Angela guides her descent by the gleam of Fareeha’s soul, something she feels more than sees. Most days, it sits beneath her ribcage, ticklish and soft, a reminder Fareeha is out there, somewhere, alive and well — it prickles hot and hard against her sternum when she was in certain distress — and with any luck, nearby.

Atmosphere stings her lungs. Punching from the celestial realm to the mortal one taxes her, to a degree, even when travelling through by choice.

_Well_ , Angela supposes, _this is a choice of sorts._

Option A: dragging her broken body around the Higher Realms and hoping whoever helped her first was untouched by the backstabbing and betrayals rippling through the ranks. Option B: flinging herself nearest Fareeha as she can manage. Not her preference, when it came to choices, but an infinite improvement upon no choice whatsoever.

Snow blankets the prickly trees and mountain ridges laid out before her. So, Fareeha is here. Somewhere. Somewhere below, in the rich wilds of the paternal half of her genetic code. Cold air whips against her and tangles its fingers in her hair. For a blink, its touched soothes her — then the rush of oxygen intensifies the flames. Angela grits her teeth and beats her wings against it. Fareeha was south of here, the tug of her essence and call of her soul a hook through Angela’s ribcage.

_CRACK_

Against the velocity, a wing snaps. New pain flashes through her. Angela gasps, sucking in wild, cold air.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_ , she berates herself. _Stupid, stupid, stupid—_

Ground punches up to greet her, and Angela’s last thoughts before impact are a tangle of her own stupidity and the aching need for Fareeha.

***

Outside, Fareeha jams the key into the ignition and urges the truck to life. Warming her hands in the scant heat blasting through the vents as the engine warms up, she’s saying, “Go, go, go, c’mon, let’s go,” balancing the need to go against the repercussions of the curmudgeonly old engine. Sam’s owned the thing longer than Fareeha remembers — during summer, he used to drive them up here in the truck. It wasn’t shiny or new to start with: the door on the passenger’s side never matched the cab and no amount of tinkering convinced the air conditioning to work for longer than ten minutes. Sometime over the past few years, an infection of rust has set in. And Fareeha’s pretty damn sure the long bench seat stretching the length of the cab is no longer legal.

But it’s yet to falter beyond lack of confidence, to break beyond repair. Fareeha holds reliability in the highest regard. The heat is coming on stronger now, the engine sputtering and coughing less — it’s settling into a nice, rhythmic purr. Fareeha snaps her buckle in and runs an affectionate hand over the dash before she returns it to the wheel. She’s glad she’s got the old wheezer here tonight. Fareeha loves her tech, but up against the unknown, she wants something she trusts on her side.

On a good day, the path draws her back to the road in maybe eight, ten minutes. In the dead of winter, snow up to her thighs, Fareeha pushes through in twenty, cursing the pass of time all the while. Trees rise up around her. Acre upon acre _upon fucking acre_ of skeletal fir and spruce and hemlock, all dark fingers pointed skyward. Crowded in close as she crunches over snow and discarded pine needles and long ghostly trunks blending into the thick of night. When she finally hits the road, they’re only so polite as to keep to the edges.

Usually Fareeha likes the trees, but in the winter night they overwhelm her in numbers and size. There’s only one Fareeha, and she’s not even two meters tall. One Fareeha against this gaunt mass, each of them averaging twenty-five meters or more, stretching on and on until they reach the boundary of mountains. And then they go on some more and climb right up the sides.

In her head, she can’t stop picturing herself, in solitude upon her metal steed, winding along the thin, twisting string of asphalt laid down among an endless forest.

Reaching for the knob, Fareeha blasts the radio and quashes the notion in the back of her mind. She burns through one song and flips to another station when a commercial follows it, and then another and another. She cares not for quality, either of musical calibre or signal strength, her priorities on loudness and familiarity. Side-eyeing the bit of forest to the north-east she estimates the meteoroid hit — the lingering veil of smoke helps — Fareeha belts out a chorus line here and there when it grabs her, fingers itching along her steering wheel to the pluck of guitar.

Static blots out songs in waves. Fareeha frowns, fiddles with the dial, picks up a new song until another static disruption crackles in over the music. Between her trips into the nearest town and the radio in the cabin, Fareeha’s grown accustomed to the fade and flow of signal strength. But when a fifth song’s garbled out she twists the radio down to a whisper. Her stomach clenches and unease burns along the back of her throat.

Should she stay her course? What if it was really some sort of dangerous meteor?

But _Angela could be hurt_ keeps skittering through her mind, and Fareeha’s faced worse than what is, at the end of the day, just a particularly strange hunk of hot rock.

And she’d leave as soon as she confirmed it wasn’t Angela.

She drives on, gut tightening as the radio spits and hisses static under its breath at her. She drums an agitated thumb on the wheel, eyes on the bend ahead.

Pure static grips the radio. Speakers belch distortion. Not the unhappy static of a fading, cranky signal or the disquieting _pop-hiss-shhh_ from up ‘til now.

Fine hairs stand up along the back of Fareeha’s neck and arms. An electric shiver slips down her spine.

Brutal, raging noise spills from the speakers. Whatever’s throwing off the strange signal or messing with the airwaves is something her radio’s interpreted as a mess of distortion, hot and angry and loud.

And when Fareeha glances back up, black scorch marks bisect the road ahead, sliding across the asphalt and disappearing into the trees.

Smoke still lingers in the air ahead. All fingers gripping the wheel now, Fareeha drives forward until she’s maybe twenty meters from the burn marks, then eases the truck onto the edge of the road.

She leaves the truck on, heat down low and four-ways on high. She brings her sidearm and one of the solar lamps for company. Approaching the scorch marks on high alert, she follows their trail between two trees off the side of the road and steps onto grass. It’s dead from the weight of snow and crunches with forming ice beneath her feet. Fareeha jabs a glove-fat finger against the lamp switch, and a ring of light encircles her. She peers ahead.

A runway of yellow-brown grass lies ahead. Ghostly trunks scorched black along their sides frame it. Something pale twitches from a branch — the space between Fareeha’s shoulders tighten — and she lifts her lantern and sees something fragile and fluttery — and scorched along the edge. She frowns. Paper, maybe?

Fareeha lifts one hand to a sulking tree and the palm of her gloves comes away blackened with soot.

Something, in the distance, _groans_.

Fareeha’s heart clutches.

Another gust of winter wind knifes at her exposed skin, bearing the sharp and undeniable tang of burnt, blackened _something_.

Fareeha draws her sidearm and pushes forward.

With the lantern covering three metres or so of clear light around her, Fareeha edges forward, one step at a time. Her breath clouds the air and dampens her scarf. Each stretch of light is similar to the last, grass and trees and grass and trees. Fareeha watches her path unfold centimetres at a time, breathing in the mountain’s breath and singed _something_.

Something, she hopes, isn’t familiar and soft and precious—

A white mass lies in her path. Well, more charred around the edges than anything else. Wind pushes at/against Fareeha again, and the thing… flutters.

Not as a whole, but as smaller, fragile units—

Fareeha’s staring at a large expanse of wingspan. At feathers the length of her forearm, all fire-chewed at the tips. One, downy and delicate, sweeps free in the blast of wind and flutters over. It bats Fareeha on the forehead.

Belatedly, she recalls the fragile burnt bits clinging to branches and thinks, _Oh_.

Her winged thing groans again and shifts a battered wing.

Fareeha’s gut tightens. Albatross do not have blonde hair. Albatross do not have pale hands reddening against the blight of snow.

And, last she checked, albatross do not wear familiar heeled boots.

***

What constitutes angel first aid?

Fareeha sets the lantern down, pinning the ring of light to one spot, and circles Angela. Biting the fingertips of her glove, she tugs one hand free and kneels. Wary of lingering heat and exposure to radiation or celestial _whatever_ , Fareeha leans over and sticks two fingers against the crook of Angela’s neck. Her skin is cool against her fingers.

She waits; counts.

Strong pulse. Not dying.

_Good_.

Fareeha pulls her fingers free, satisfied. Angela is smaller than her, slimmer than her, but with a whole lot of wing. She rests a hand on her shoulder. She can’t identify whatever fabric rests beneath her hand. Never could. Sturdy and soft, but not luxuriously so, and — now that Fareeha’s looking — without any apparent seams. Angela groans again.

Fareeha rubs a circle on Angela’s shoulder with her thumb. “Hey,” she says, “Angie, it’s me.”

Another groan, lighter in pitch.

Fareeha asks, “Can you move your feet for me?”

One of the boots — delicate things, Fareeha notes, useless in the snow and ice — shifts a fraction.

“Thanks,” Fareeha says. She clears her throat. “I’m going to move you now. Please be okay.”

Flexing her fingers first to fight off the creeping stiffness, Fareeha unzips her coat. Cold hits her torso like a wall of ice and she’s hissing, “ _Fuck, fuck, fuck,_ ” under her breath before she frees her arms. “I’m going to try and help you,” she says to the Angela, “please know if I hurt you, it’s not on purpose, Angie.”

Jaw tight with nerves, Fareeha sets about bundling the angel wings. Following its natural bend, Fareeha eases one wing, then the other, down along Angela’s spine. She moans again, and Fareeha apologizes.

“We’ll be safe in the truck soon,” she promises. “I left it running, it’ll be warm.”

She goes on, talking about the truck, then the cabin and all its warmth and safety. She apologizes, unsure if the little groans are her fault. Soon, the wings are tucked in neat against her back and Fareeha’s heavy coat is swaddled around her.

Even with her scraped face, cheeks blighted red from frost, mussed hair, and singed _everything_ , she’s a picture perfect angel: the blonde hair, the delicate features, the slender frame. Fareeha pockets her ammunition and firearm on separate sides, ties a sash out of her scarf to carry the lantern and lifts Angela into her arms.

She’s… light. For the weight of significance Fareeha carries, Angela sits no heavier than an ordinary woman. With one arm under her knees and the other cradling her upper torso, her forehead sits against Fareeha’s shoulder.

Staring at the pinched face on her shoulder, Fareeha swallows down an uncharacteristic lump of uncertainty rising in her throat. Impossibly delicate brows and eyelashes decorate her face, and to Fareeha’s surprise, bruised rings of exhaustion.

Fareeha slips into Arabic as she winds her way back to the truck.

“ _It’s okay, everything’s okay now, do not worry.”_

“ _We’ll be at the truck soon, you can lie down there, I promise._ ”

“ _Shhh, shhh, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, we’ll be safe soon._ ”

With every footfall, Fareeha is wary of jostling her, of knocking against some unseen wound or break in her strange body, and so the trip back to the truck takes nearly three times as long. By the time Fareeha arrives at her truck, rumbling faithfully in place, Angela’s intermittent moans drop into whimpers.

Heart twisting up, Fareeha whispers, “I’m sorry,” as she shifts her angel higher up on her shoulder to open the door, but then she finally — _finally_ — eases her limp form inside.

Inside the cab, the radio remains righteously angry. Fareeha twists it off and glances at Angela. She’s curled on her side, Fareeha’s hood half off her blond hair. Fareeha tugs it up to cover her pinked ears, rubs and blows on her own hands for warmth, and then drives home.

Nothing happens for the first half of the drive. (Besides the feeling gradually seeping back into her fingers, anyway.) Fareeha spends the time in silence, what focus she doesn’t dedicate to the road honed in on the angel’s ragged breathing, her little whimpers of pain. Fareeha locks her fingers around the steering wheel and thinks, _Who hurts an angel?_

She’s not sure she wants the answer

Fareeha catches her suppressed groans when she hits a rock and doesn’t know what to say.

She reaches over and rests a hand on the hood up over Angela’s hair. “S’all right, Angie,” she murmurs, “It’s going to be okay soon, I promise.”

Rough road comes up in the truck’s headlights and soon it’s scraping under the tires, a vibration passing through the truck, poorly abated by the truck’s ancient shocks. Under her hand, Angela sucks in a soft, high whimper and Fareeha shuts her eyes against the sound.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she’s murmuring as she eases the truck to a stop.

Fareeha leaves the truck running, leaves the heat on, and exits. A pit stop to the back bed for the heavy duty first aid kit, and then she’s on Angela’s side of the cabin. Fareeha sets the case at her feet and flips the big latch open. It’s a first aid kit for the days they spend up at the cabin, not a fiddly little white plastic clutch for suburban soccer moms and kids with scraped knees. Oh, little folded squares of white sponge gauze and finger bandages and gel antibiotic cream sits in a little pocket, for sure. But this is a case intended to endure. Leather-wrapped metal on the outside, the lifted lid snaps in place and sits at the height of Fareeha’s knees. Inside rest suture kits (complete with hooked needle) and skin glue and second skin burn pads and forceps and benzalkonium chloride antiseptic towelettes and packets of nitrile examination gloves and a thermal blanket and on and on and on.

And an axe.

Growing up, Fareeha learned she never really knew when she’d need an axe.

Luckily, tonight, she does not. So far.

Fareeha opens the truck door and leans her top half in. It’s a process, but she unzips the coat bundled around Angela, no small feat with Angela on her stomach now and the zipper under her. Fareeha bonks the back of her head off the truck’s interior no less than four times. Throughout it all, she’s got her voice down low in a murmur, a constant stream of, “Angela, Angela, Angela, Angie, Angie. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

With Angela’s bent wings folded small against her back and blood soaking her left shoulder, Fareeha kneels beside the first aid arsenal and tries to make it true.

Fareeha wields the heavy scissors from the case and slices through the fabric, unveiling Angela’s wounds. Their circumstances were similar the day they met six years ago — an angel and a solider. But Angela was the one out in the middle of fuck off nowhere and Fareeha was the one plummeting from the sky.

***

Fareeha is falling.

Falling, and likely, dying.

Fareeha is falling the way fools fall: encased in a prototype jetsuit, low on fuel, and about fifty kilometres south of the end of her test run. But — oh — there is Mount Catherine — Gabal Katrîne — with the sun haloing behind one of her ridges.

Holographic vitals frame the inside of her helmet. Few are her own — heartbeat, temperature, and pulse — most were the suit’s: fuel levels, internal and external temperatures, coolant levels, armour integrity, atmospheric pressure, and altitude. At present, the fuel levels dip and جائع - empty — blinks beside it. Fareeha grits her teeth and angles the rockets on the back of the suit, planning to ease down to a gentle landing.

**WARNING - إنذار - WARNING** scrolls over the holographic readout. In the corner of her vision, the simplified graphic of her suit blinks and one of her thrusters blinks yellow, then orange, then red.

“Shit.” Overheating.

_FOOM_

Fareeha registers the sound of an explosion. Heat radiates over her back.

_Shit,_ she thinks this time.

Sky and Mount Catherine’s creamy brown rocks tip one over the other. Fareeha redirects all fuel to her remaining thruster. For a single second, she’s hovering, easing down from the skies.

And جائعflickers over her screen again.

Later Fareeha likens the experience to the world pulling the rug out from under her, but the truth is there’s no rug. Her thruster is firing, then it’s not, and she’s plunging

down

_down_

_down—_

Fareeha wakes up. Or comes back to herself. The time in the corner of her readout tells her only a few minutes have passed between her thruster blowing out and now.

Mount Catherine is the highest mountain in Egypt. Fareeha’s got an affinity for mountains, all those summers with her father and the great grey shield of the Rockies rising all around them. Mount Catherine’s composition is nothing like the Rockies _—_ it’s all smooth caramel coloured rocks, edges blurred, dropping away to canyons now and then.

Fareeha peers up. Every bone aches. She can’t remember the fall. Canyon walls embrace her, the stone all around her in shadow. Glorious sun draws her attention; the sky is so high above her now. So far away. Sometimes ravines run through these canyons, and Fareeha is half in and half out of one.

Fareeha runs the logistics: she’s two hundred kilometres from the base south-east of the Suez canal. In her possession: a ceramic knife, no food rations, ravine water and an expensive military jetsuit with its expensive military holographic readout winking out on her.

Maybe tourists will find her.

She probably deserves this.

Groaning through the whole process, Fareeha pats herself over: lots of bumps and bruises, but nothing broken, nothing jabbing into or out of her skin. Back at base, someone would assist her. She’s alone out here, body and ego battered, and the sky is purpling into night when she pops off her last piece of armour.

Heaving out a breath of relief, Fareeha sets her helmet beside her. Hot air blows down the canyon and her hair tickles her neck.

At least it’s night, Fareeha thinks. She leans back on her good arm — her right elbow aches something fierce, much too fierce for use — and exhales. Down to the left in the canyon, the walls twist into a bend: shadows and more rocks. Fareeha glances to the right. The ravine thins to a trickle and at the end of it waits a pair of glowing eyes.

Fareeha freezes, hand gripping the ground.

_This is it. This is the void staring back at me._

Her jaw twitches. Does she laugh? Or cry? Beg for the animal to spare her? Or eat her quick—

It’s a woman. A woman with eyes hazed in blue light, but a woman.

Or something woman-shaped at least.

***

Angela wakes fully in a dark, cramped space. She’s face down on a slick material. For a while now, she’s noted the hum of a machine under her and the blast of artificial heat on her cheek. Cold wind sweeps across her back and her wounds sting. Soft hands dance around her wounds and a softer voice fills her ears.

Angela lifts her head. Her cheek sticks to the seat. “Fareeha?”

Soft hands stop. One finds an unwounded spot on her shoulder and rubs. “Angie,” comes the reply. “Hey.”

“You found me,” she exhales. She never doubted Fareeha. Fareeha did everything in her power, always, when it came to helping: the wounded, the vulnerable, the innocent. Angela worried over other intervening factors.

“Of course,” Fareeha’s saying. “Of course, I’ll always find you.” A cool, familiar hand moves to stroke her hair. “Always.”

Angela tips her head into Fareeha’s familiar touch, her certain, careful fingers. So close, Fareeha’s soul hums in her chest, in the little spot where they’re twined together. Angela finds comfort in it; she wants to curl around it, catlike. Inevitably, Angela will leave. Maybe sooner, maybe later. She’ll leave and Fareeha’s spot inside of her will sit quiet and knowing and hollow. If she’s not busy, she flits to the edge of a concert or music festival — something with drums. She stands close enough so the drum fills her chest and it’s not the same — nothing replaces Fareeha’s nearness. But for an hour or so it’s a suitable placebo.

But songs end. And Angela always leaves.

And the she can no longer ignore the thrum of tainted energy at the edge of her consciousness.

“We’re in danger,” Angela speaks up. She lifts a hand and settles it on top of Fareeha’s. Her nails are neat and new scars line her knuckles. How much time lay between now and the last time she cradled them? Nearly a year and a half now? “You’re in danger, Fareeha.” _For helping me._

Fareeha’s hand stills. Her voice drops into a whisper. “What’s happened Angie?” she asks. “Who hurt you?”

Angela shifts in the seat. Amelie is coming. She needs to get up. _Needs_ to protect Fareeha. “The same woman who shot your mother.”

Fareeha stops breathing. Angela’s all twisted up in Fareeha’s lifeforce now, and it echoes through her: the spike of pulse, the captured breath in her lungs. Fareeha’s hand stiff and unmoving underneath her own.

“What?” she breathes out, finally.

Snippets of the scene slip through Angela’s mind. Two humans, two snipers. One with a will of steel and one with a wall of steel around her heart and mind. If anyone stood a chance, it was Ana. And yet—

“I was forbidden from intervening, Fareeha,” she says quickly. “A fallen angel has twisted her will up in a human. This human does her bidding. I was sent to undo it.” Angela swallows. “I failed. I failed to stop her. I failed to save her. But I could heal your mother. So I did.”

Fareeha’s breath hitches again. “Angela,” her voice comes raspy, “ _what_ is going on?”

Beneath herself, Angela flattens her palm and prepares to rise. “Things in the celestial realm are getting complicated,” she says. “I’ll explain later. There’s no time.”

Angela’s fought against a protesting body before. She’s no stranger to wounds. Grunting, she pushes up, and Fareeha’s worried words and hands flutter around her. Pain from impact sings an encore through her bones: pain in her shoulders, pain in her back, pain in her ribs. One broken wing shifts as she moves; Angela sucks in a gasp, then grits her teeth.

Fareeha’s a good soldier. But Ana was a special ops soldier with dozens of years guiding her aim and decisions, and none of it was enough against Amelie and the twisted will leading her around.

Teeth gritted, Angela twists to face Fareeha. She’s without a jacket — of course, Angela was bundled in it, she sees now — and she’s pulled her hat over her ears. It’s a black and grey knitted toque, with a blue and white diamond pattern around the middle. Store bought or crafted specifically for Fareeha? Is there someone in her life who knits hats for her now? Angela shakes the thought away. Golden bangles rest against her cheeks and does Fareeha regret where them in the cold? It’s cold enough now to coax out reddened patches visible on her cheeks and nose.

Angela leans forward, hand out to touch those cheeks—

and oh—

—her _back_.

Angela’s known pain before, too, many times, both her own and others’. In the physical sense, nothing compares to a burn: the heat, the depth, the pervasive wrongness. A cut is an interruption in the body, requiring a stitch or a bandage to knit itself back together. Burns are an alteration on a deeper level: destroyed cells, dehydrated flesh, a lingering hotness to the touch. When a body is burned, it needs new skin entirely. Either grown painstakingly, over weeks or months, or through the help of surgical intervention.

With some time and effort, Angela possesses the power to heal another’s burns.

But herself?

Angela does not possess the ability to heal herself.

Pain slaps her between the shoulders and a sob grips her throat. Deep and wrong and hot -- it robs her of energy and she topples forward.

“Angela!” Soft, chilled flannel and a solid body break her fall. Fareeha’s arms form a gentle embrace around her. Angela squeezes her eyes shut and leans her forehead into Fareeha’s familiar shoulder. “Angela, what’s going on? What are you doing?” Fareeha’s breath tickles her ear.

So close, Fareeha’s soul sings against her. Angela steadies herself with a deep breath. She’s gripping Fareeha, gripping her shirt with all the energy she can muster, she realizes. “I don’t know who’s drawn what lines and where in the high realms anymore,” Angela says. “And there is a very dangerously competent human after me. A corrupted angel has filled her with her own grace. She’s no different from an angel right now, I don’t know if there’s a difference between her own will and the other’s anymore.”

Fareeha’s hands settle into a safe place low on her back. “So we run,” she says. “I’ll get back in the truck and gun the gas.”

Angela shakes her head against Fareeha. “She’s too close and too dangerous,” she says. “I’ll hold her off. After, we’ll try to find some place defensible. Someplace I can sigil.”

“Hold her off?” Fareeha pulls back to stare into her eyes. “You can barely hold yourself up, Angie..”

Angela tightens her grip on Fareeha’s shirt. The shirt is old and worn. A lump rises in her throat. “She’s too close.”

Fareeha’s brows crease. “What about your angel sigils? Can you spell the car?”

Another headshake. “The spell requires a stationary location.”

The corner of Fareeha’s mouth twitches into a smile. “Don’t know if you noticed, but the truck is stationary.”

“No, Fareeha, it needs to be something more... substantial,” Angela tries to explain. “More permanent. Vehicles do poorly with these spells.”

“What about the cabin?” Fareeha offers. “It’s old, and mostly wood, but it’s definitely substantial.”

Angela thinks on it. “Old is good,” she says. “The cabin sounds perfect, but—”

“So we’ll gun it to the cabin.”

Gripping Fareeha’s shirt, Angela struggles to rise. Jaw tight, she braces herself for the wave of pain. Gasping, she says, “No, she’s too close. Minutes now—”

Fareeha’s arms settle around her and Angela is weightless as Fareeha shifts her back into the truck’s cabin. Precious and weightless and cared for.

“Angie, look what she’s already done to you—”

Angela interrupts. “She surprised me—”

“Angela, you will _die_.” Fareeha bows her head and presses her forehead to Angela’s shoulder. “Please. Please don’t fight her like this. There must be another way. Let me help.”

Releasing Fareeha’s shirt, Angela wraps her arms around the woman’s body and pulls her close. Beneath her flannel Fareeha is all solid familiar body and a humming, perfect soul. Angela leans her lips near Fareeha’s ear. “She’ll kill you as easily as me, Fareeha,” she says. “She nearly killed your mother. She defeated _Ana Amari._ ”

“When we survive this, remind me to ask you about that,” Fareeha says into her shoulder. She lifts her head and meets Angela’s eyes. “Wait— you said she’s actually human, correct?” Angela nodded and Fareeha continued, “Can you— could you do that for me? Lend me your grace, I mean. Your powers.”

Angela bit her lip. “That’s — that’s dangerous.”

“Seems like everything’s dangerous right now, Angie.”

Angela moves her hands to Fareeha’s upper arms and grips them. “What’s happened to Amelie is unnatural,” she says. “You need to understand this. I don’t know her limits — it’s possible she can carry borrowed grace indefinitely.” Angela squeezes Fareeha’s arms. “You cannot.”

Fareeha tips her chin up. “I can do it,” she says. “Tell me my limits and what I can do to maim her.”

She says it as though Angela’s assigning her a mission. Maybe it’s easier for her. Easier for Fareeha to compartmentalize it. Mission statement, mission execution, mission results. _Boom, boom, boom._

_Fareeha Amari reporting back. Mission success._

“You won’t have an angel’s healing time. Or my own abilities for that matter,” Angela explains. In her chest, she feels Amelie’s corrupted energy: it throbs heavy and disjointed. It's a laboured heartbeat, a laboured existence. Fareeha’s is steady and strong and right. “Get her wings. And quick, Fareeha. If you don’t hand my grace back, it’ll eat right through you. You’ll burn from the inside out within an hour. And even if you do get back on time, you’ll be exhausted. Do you understand?”

Fareeha lifts a hand to Angela’s face, her thumb coming to rest below her eye. “Not _if_ I get back. When, Angie; _when_ I get back,” she says. “Do it, Angela. Please.”

Angela’s mind is failing the way it fails when Fareeha touches her, skin on skin, direct and intentional. Like cogs clicking backward, she thinks, Do what again? Oh, right, and fumbles through her clothes. “I need a knife,” she says to Fareeha.

Fareeha removes her hand and produces a pocket knife. “You have my blade, my lady.".

Accepting the knife, Angela flicks the blade open. She holds the tip to her skin. Fareeha lifts a hand to stop her, then rests it on her knee instead. Steadied, Angela sets to work.

Lending grace is no small thing, no easy task. It’s deliberate and bloody. Jaw clamped tight, Angela directs her thoughts to the pain of her back. Sharp, new lines in her palm sting and bleed, and then she’s finished: the sigil sits bloody and raw in her palm.

Angela looks up. In a matter-of-fact voice, she says, “I’ll need to carve the same mark over your heart.”

Fareeha pales. “I—,” she stares down at Angela’s palm. “Okay.” Removing her hand from Angela’s knee, she lifts it and unbuttons the top three buttons on her shirt, then tugs the collar of her sweatshirt down. “Wait—” She turns around, back to Angela, and glances at her over her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Angela frowns.

“Wings, right?” Fareeha says. “They’ll need to get free.”

“Are you sure?” Angela rests a hand to Fareeha’s back. Between her skin and Fareeha’s tight back lies a thick layer of lined flannel.

Fareeha shoots her a smile. “The other option’s flying around in my bra.”

“Oh,” Angela’s gaze dips down. “Correct.”

Fareeha says, “Not the weather for full frontal flying.” She bobs her head toward the space beside Angela. “Heavy duty scissors might be better. I used them to expose the wounds on your back. To your left.”

Scissors in hand, Angela fists a mass of fabric, bloodying Fareeha’s shirt, and cuts through. _Snip_. She leaves an uncertain slash of fabric behind. Another handful, another snip. Through the shadows of the fabric she sees Fareeha’s skin.

“What a pair we make,” Angela says, “Cutting our clothes off in such weather.”

Fareeha turns around, smiling. As Angela watches, her brown eyes flick to the knife Angela carries again, and the edges of the smile strain. “Would you rather crash in the desert with burn wounds?” She pulls her shirt collar down again.

“Good point.” Angela leans in with the knife. “Fareeha, you don’t have to do this—”

Fareeha tugs her shirt pointedly.

So Angela carves.

In her years, she’s seen horrors, on the bodies of both angels and humans. She steels her heart when she does, ignores her heavy chest and pushes on. This — intentionally carving up skin, _Fareeha’s_ skin — squeezes her stomach. A cold sweat slicks her neck. Nausea tightens her throat. Beneath her hand, Fareeha’s breathing flattens to something shallow.

Angela pulls back. “It’s done,” her voice comes light. “I’m so sorry, Fareeha,” she says. “I’ll fix this after.”

Fareeha leans over and removes the knife from her hand. Angela stares down as Fareeha sets it on the dashboard, then bends to the metal case at her feet and comes up with medical tape and sponge gauze. “You’re already hurt enough,” she says.

Angela swallows hard and grips the supplies in her free hand. “I’m going to press my sigil to yours,” she says. “To pass it back, you’ll carve the same symbol on your hand and transfer it from here,” she holds her fist to Fareeha’s chest, then places it over her own, “to here. And hurry, Fareeha. Please. If you hold it too long, that damage I cannot undo.”

“Understood,” Fareeha says. She lifts Angela’s wounded hand and brings it to her lips. “For luck.”

Face warming, Angela presses her bloodied palm to Fareeha’s bloodied chest.

***

Fareeha breathes in and Angela’s grace slams into her veins. For a gilded moment, she’s no longer Fareeha Amari, she’s—

— _she’s three and small and her parents are always fussing over her. Her mother stands at the stove, stirring pots, fragrant steam billowing up. She stares up at her mother, with her blond hair wrapped in a tight bun out of her face and a white apron around her warm, soft stomach._

_Mami’s hand snaps back. “Ach!” She holds it up, blows on it._

_She slides down from the chair and offers out a hand. “Here, Mami, I’ll kiss it better.”_

_Mami’s eyes threaten to water, but she holds her palm out. A red welt rises on the meat of her thumb. “Okay, Ängeli, but be gentle.”_

_She cups Mami’s hand in both of her own and kisses it — kisses it better—_

— _and she’s six and running, running, running over the hills, hair loose and flying behind her. She’s alone, as always, Mami and Vati always warning her, grasping her hand and whispering, “And remember, Ängeli—”_

— _don’t stray too close to the village proper—_

— _leave the fixing to the doctor—_

— _if the other children ask to many questions, tell them you’re needed at home—_

_So she’s alone and running down, down, down the hill. wind whips her cheeks and grass stains the hem of her dress and maybe she can fly—_

_But—_

_She cannot fly._

_Not yet, anyway._

_She tumbles, head first, down the hill. Earthy grass mingles with flashes of darkness and sunny skies as the ground batters her down the hill._

_She stops at the base of_ _a_ _tree and starts crying._

_She’s not hurt, not really, she’ll realize later. It’s more the shock of the experience. But that wasn’t how it was supposed to go and maybe if I’d jumped I could’ve flew away instead and mamma’s gonna be livid over my dress._

_Soft cries cut into her own. She stops; lifts her head and listens. Something deeper in the copse of tries squeaks and the sound hurts her heart. She rises, her own aches forgotten, and weaves through the trees, trailing the sound._

_Eyes down, she finds a fledging sparrow in the shadow of a bush. Fluffy grey down shows in patches, wide dark eyes craned up at her and one wing bent at an odd angle._

_She drops to her knees and gathers him in her hands. Mami’s forbidden it, but— she casts a glance over her shoulder — but it should be fine. Concentrating on the little lifeforce in her hands_

— _and she’s not twelve, not yet, her birthday is next week and her life is in flames._

_Vati shoved them out the back window, leaning out to grab Mami in one final hug. Behind her, flames lick the house. Smoke, thick and dark, fills the sky._

_Ash, all ash._

_Then Mami trips and hits the ground hard. She drops down beside her, but Mami shoves at her, hissing, Go, Ängeli, go!”_

— _and she’s all alone, for years now. Maybe three, maybe four, drifting from town to town, village to village, scraping by on big blue eyes and a merciless work ethic._

_She’s in boy’s trousers, knee-deep in stable much, when a man with eerily symmetrical features and too-clean clothes for the spring rains wanders in. He sees her and smiles. Not a shining smile, like her parents had for her. But a smooth, practised one._

_He says, “I’ve looked quite a few places for you,” and holds out his hand. “The impossible angel.”_

_She grips the pitchfork between her hands and angles the tines at his chest._

— _and time passes, so much time. She’s older now and understands what she is._

_And she understands directing so much grace into her unique ability is dangerous, will earn her a reprimand._

_But she also understands Fareeha is dying._ _Understands_ _the metal debris embedded in her side will kill her. She sees the lifeblood bleeding out onto the sand._

_What she understands, mostly, is how she felt the night she met Fareeha, and it snuffs out every other doubt and fear._

— _and—_

Fareeha snaps to cold reality. Wind howls down the road, whipped into a frenzy. Loose snowflakes prickle her face. Pressure sits strange between her shoulder blades.

_Wings._

She stretches them wide. White feathers fan out at the edges of her vision. They’re like a second pair of arms, the bends similar. Bitter wind blows and grazes its harsh teeth over her new wings. Muscles in her back twitch — she yearns to beat against the wind, yearns to grasp the skies with them.

Fareeha turns back. Angela sits hunched over in the truck. A grey pallor colours her face, the veins bold and blue against papery skin. Her wings hang limp and discoloured against her back.

“Ange—” she begins.

Angela’s eyes come back into focus. “G- _go_ ,” she chatters out.

Fareeha nods, beats her wings once in a test, and then she’s gone.

***

With Fareeha goes her grace and with her grace goes her angel’s self-healing. It’s the thin sheath between Angela and the weight of her injuries. Pain rides through her, rides over her; Angela wraps her arms around herself and digs her nails into her arms.

_Hurry, Fareeha._

In her dark clothes, Fareeha’s a smudge against the sky, the scant light reflecting off her new wings giving her away. Fareeha’s a natural in the sky. Angela would not gift her grace to just anyone, after all.

Even if the first time she glimpsed Fareeha, she was crashing down to earth.

Angela watched the woman — a human — with mechanical wings crash down to earth and stand up from it. She’s bruised and limping and hesitant in her movements, but moving about all the same. Piece by piece, she frees herself from her winged suit. Then she notices Angela.

Angela’s all tied up in trap, courtesy of the Facilitator Factor of Angels. Fareeha drops into sweet, steady Arabic and comes like she’s approaching a wild animal, hands open and body bent over. Angela knows she must look a sight, wounded and two days trapped in the canyon. Fareeha produces a knife and cuts through the wire. Angela’s attempts to free herself wound in celestial fire tracing over the wires, again and again, burning them against her own skin. The trap doesn’t activate for this human, this stranger, and soon Angela is free. She stretches her wings and stares up.

Fareeha steps back and gestures a push. “Go on,” she urges.

Angela reaches up and settles a hand over the stranger’s hip. Pain sings to Angela, and this woman is in pain. She heals her.

The woman lowers a hand to her healed bones.

Angela sits back and wraps her arms around her knees. “Thank you for saving me,” she says. “My name is Angela.”

She blinks. “Fareeha Amari,” she says. Then, “You’re an angel,” she begins.

Angela smiles over her knees. “What gave it away?” Fair enough.

“A biblical angel?” Fareeha presses.

She shakes her head. “The human concept of a messenger, or guardian angel or spirit dates back as earlier as Zoroastrianism. We’re merely inspiration,” she says. “I’m simply another sentient being, same as you.”

“With, ah, certain differences?”

“With certain differences.”

Fareeha’s brows inch up. “Do— do you date back to Zoroastrianism?”

“Oh, no,” Angela says. “My lifespan is quite similar to yours, I assure you.”

Fareeha releases a sigh through her nose. “An actual angel,” she murmurs. Then she lowers herself and drops beside Angela. The pants Fareeha wore beneath her armour are sturdy and skin tight. Angela feels Fareeha’s warmth through the fabric where their legs touch.

They sit in silence. Fareeha tips her head up, and so Angela does as well and together they watch the stars come out. It’s the first time Angela feels it: the calm hum of Fareeha’s soul, although she’s not fully in tune with it. Not bonded to it, not yet.

Fareeha clears her throat. “Are you going to take care of that?” She points to a burn on Angela’s arm: a thin line left by the wire trap.

Angela shakes her head. She plans to explain herself, but Fareeha pushes herself to her feet, wanders over to her dismantled winged suit and wanders back with a small white box. She crouches beside her again and sets to work on the burn lines up and down Angela’s arms. Angela’s eyes flicker shut under her touch.

“So,” Fareeha’s voice is close and her breath is warm against Angela’s skin. “An angel named Angela?”

Angela smiles to herself. “I received my name before anyone knew about the angel part,” she says. “That came after.”

“If you don’t mind: how does that work?” Fareeha’s eyes are curious when Angela peeks at her.

She’s spent part of her life dodging humans after her for her abilities and the other in service to the angels, and it amounts to the same thing: _the humans don’t understand you, Angela._ _The_ _humans will always try to hurt you, use you._

But here is this strange human, who flew in the skies, whose first instinct is to help her, whose soul beats steady and true and warm.

“I’m a bit of an anomaly,” Angela admits. “I was born to human parents.”

Fareeha lays a strip of dressing down over her arm, fingers smoothing medical tape over the edges. “That doesn’t happen often?”

“Never,” Angela confirms. “I’m the only one.”

“So you’re special,” Fareeha’s grin is full of warmth.

And for once, it’s not any of the other things defining her as special: it’s Fareeha’s smile, her careful fingers, her gentle attention.

So Angela spills it all.

“I’m the only angel who can heal,” she admits. “Humans, other angels, animals—”

Fareeha pauses and gives Angela’s newly bandaged arm a pointed glance.

“But not myself,” she says.

“I suppose everything has a catch.” Fareeha continues bandaging. “So, if you’re rare and special, and I’ve met you, what does that make me?”

***

The fight is quick and dirty, quicker than Fareeha imagined, given Angela’s fears.

Purpose burns through her and guides her hand. Or maybe it’s the borrowed grace reacting to the puppet angel. A hot, sickly pulse beats in Fareeha’s chest and rises in her throat. She beats against the wind and follows.

She finds her soon enough: a gunshot brushes by her wings and she swings hard to the left to avoid it. The shot burns through two feathers like fire. Frowning, Fareeha brushes her fingers over the burnt spot.

_Not a bullet_ , she decides. _Experimental rifle then?_

Another shot follows and Fareeha sweeps left and right, avoiding three, four, five shots.

Then a pause.

_Reloading time?_

Pushing forward against the dark night, following the tainted pulse in her chest—

_There_.

Borne on discoloured wings, a woman clutches a rifle. It’s a strange weapon;,, Fareeha has never seen its like. Discolouration paints her skin an unnatural blue , in keeping with her dark, deadened eyes.

Fareeha grips the axe in her hands. She was right, It would be good for something.

Electric green energy lights up the length of the rifle. Fareeha beats her wings hard and prepares to dodge. From a distance, the shots rang soundless, but close in, Fareeha hears their soft pulse as they fire.

One shot—

— _Sweep left,_

two shots,

— _sweep up,_

three shots,

— _sweep right,_

Four shots—

Fareeha drops too slow. Heat burns near her foot. She grits her teeth against a yell.

And then she pulls her arm back and swings.

Whatever the sniper expects, it’s not an axe. She beats her wings a fraction too slow.

_CRACK_

Fareeha cringes, beats her wings hard once to gain air. Below her, the woman falls, expressionless. She, her rifle and her left wing are all on separate trajectories.

Turning away, her body burning against the cold, Fareeha returns to Angela.

***

Warm hand on her cheek. Soft voice in her ear.

“Angie, hey, c’mon, Angie.”

Fareeha, Angela registers, distantly. She tips her body away from the truck’s heat vents and toward familiarity. Fareeha’s familiar body comes up to meet hers.

“Shit,” Fareeha is saying into her hair, “Shit. Hang on, Ange, hang on.”

Fareeha’s body separates from hers. Angela tries to grumble, but produces a whine instead.

Beside her, Fareeha’s grunting, then she says, “Angela? This is going to hurt.”

Fareeha’s warm hands come to rest on her again. Then: agony. Pain carves up the skin of her chest. She clutches her hands reflexively and grips soft fabric and hot skin.

Around her, Fareeha’s slipping into Arabic again, all apologies and warm words. Angela grips Fareeha, her lifeline, sinks into her arms. Until Fareeha’s palm, hot with blood and borrowed grace, presses against the pain and for a bright moment, she’s no longer Angela Ziegler, she’s—

— _she’s four, and her mother is the most important woman in the whole world, she must be, she’s always leaving—_

— _she’s seven and her father hands her a brush thick with varnish and kneels beside her over a plank of wood—_

— _she’s twelve and she thinks she’s ready to go out and heal the world, and for some reason her mother is angry—_

— _she’s sixteen and her mother can’t stop her, can’t stop her from enlisting, and she’s never seen Ana Amari so furious—_

— _she’s nineteen, and she’s just learned what the kiss of a bullet feels like—_

— _she’s twenty-four and re-enlisting, and she hasn’t spoken to her mother in over a year, but somehow, somehow Ana Amari knows and shows up only to say nothing—_

— _she’s twenty-six and seeing the jetsuit she’s to test pilot, the Raptora MK.I for the first time and she’s going to fly—_

— _she’s twenty-six, and she’s met an angel, a real angel and maybe together they can—_

— _she’s twenty-nine and her guts are full of shrapnel, her body full of holes_ _—_

_She’s more in the void then out, her vision gone, and the only sensations left_ _are_ _pain and hot blood over her abdomen and then_ _—_

_Light. Cool light prickles her eyelids and waves of relief sweep her body. She cracks an eye open and it’s Angela. Of course, of course it’s Angela, her angel. Tears carve a path through the dust_ _coating her face,_ _from her blue eyes to her chin and she’s saying words Fareeha skirts around the edges of, but can't quite seem to fathom._

_And then the pain is gone, fully gone. There’s only trying blood coating her stomach and the sand around her, and Angela lying on her, curled around a new scar in her body, and sobbing._

_She sits up and breathes her first real breath of air. Angela lifts her head from where she’s pillowed it on her stomach and sobs, “Oh, god.”_

_She lifts a shaking arm and pulls Angela in close. They crash together in a kiss, Angela’s lips against hers, bodies trembling, hands gripping hungrily at clothes. She wants to hold her tight, hold her close, forever maybe but—_

_Angela is pulling away, leaning back and shaking her head._

_Now she’s saying those awful words. Soul-crushing words. “Fareeha, we can’t,” she’s saying, although her hand still grips her shoulder. “Humans and angels aren’t supposed to— ”_

— _and—_

Angela slams back into herself, grace burning away the edges of her pain. She stares up Fareeha instead of herself now, and thinks, Oh.

“Shit, Ange,” Fareeha’s saying, “Did that work? Are you okay?”

Angela leans back in Fareeha’s arms. Her hurts echo through her: the carved marks, the lingering fever from the exchange, the deep exhaustion, a burn on her calf. She reaches up, presses an already scabbing hand to Fareeha’s bare skin and heals her the best she can. Fareeha’s trembling stops and she breathes in, heavy.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says. “Don’t waste your energy on me, Angela.”

Angela slumped against the seat. “Too late.” She managed a smile. “How about you get us home?”

***

Angela curls against Fareeha’s side, weight on her shoulder, for the ride to the cabin.

Fareeha does not mind one bit.

When they arrive, Fareeha shuts the truck off, pockets her keys and helps a wobbly Angela to the cabin. At first, Angela insists she can walk without help, but her weight comes down on Fareeha’s right side and Fareeha immediately slips an arm around Angela to correct her balance. Her slim waist is evident, even through the puff of Fareeha’s coat.

Inside, after sigiling the doors and windows, Angela leans up against a support beam, and Fareeha readjusts the couch to face the warmth of the woodstove again. Fareeha’s hood has fallen from Angela’s head and in the uneven, flickering light of the stove, the shadows beneath her eyes hang deeper. Fareeha gives the couch another hasty shove.

"Sorry,” she says, “I wasn’t comfortable with my back to the windows all the time.”

She offers a hand and guides Angeal to the couch. The woman drops with a groan of relief and tucks herself up against the armrest. In the glow of the stove, Fareeha catches the fine sheen of sweat along her brow.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have anything stronger than Advil in the first aid kit,” she admits. “I can get that now. Finally patch you up properly.”

Angela shakes her head. “I think I’d like to just sit for a minute, first.” She squeezes her eyes shut.

Fareeha hovers nearby, unsure. She is not a woman without patience, but hovering when the option to help is at hand chafes her soul. “I can make tea,” she offers. “Or food. I usually let the fava beans soak overnight, but with an hour and change I can have a warm meal for you.”

“I don’t think I can stomach a full meal right now, Fareeha,” she says. “But I won’t turn down tea.”

Fareeha busies herself with refilling the kettle, prepping the mugs, and fortifying the stove's fire. Angela accepts the offer of dates. Fareeha sneaks glances as she waits on the kettle: Angela eats five dates, first with a slow bite and chew, and then with vigour. She’s licking the sticky residue from the tip of her fingers when Fareeha settles a steaming mug beside her on the couch.

Angela glances up. “You have so many questions,” she states.

Fareeha inhales. “You mentioned Ana — my mother.”

Angela lifts her mug to her lips. “Go ahead. After what you’ve done for me tonight, I can’t deny you.” She blows on the surface of her tea and coils of steam drift free.

Taking a seat in the chair at the far end of the couch, Fareeha runs her mind along the borders of the questions circling around her head. She’s torn mint leaves into her tea and inhales the bright scent as she orders her mind. _Start with the basics_. “Ana’s alive,” she begins.

Angela nods. “Ana’s alive.”

“Why didn’t you—,” she swallows. “I saw you six months after that, Ange.”

Angela stares down at her steaming tea. “It was her choice, Fareeha.”

Fareeha releases a sigh through her nose. “I suppose that’s something.” She sips tea. The rest of her questions are more personal. Or borderline rude. She approaches one with care. “How did you wind up…?” Fareeha traces an arc of descent through the air.

Angela’s face tightens. “I just don’t know who to trust in the Higher Realms anymore,” she says. “I thought Amelie was utilised to silence human agents who were becoming meddlesome. Clearly, I was wrong.” She inhales and sets her mug on an empty space of cushion near her feet. “Speaking of, I think it’s unwise to let these linger much longer.” She shifts in place. “It’s not as… demanding. But it still hurts.”

Fareeha drinks another gulp of tea and rises. At Angela’s instruction, she fetches a bowl of water from the pump, spare towels, and her first aid kit. On her return, she finds Angela’s shed the coat and sits half twisted in place, a hand probing a dark stain low along her right side. The center is damp — Angela pulls her hand away and blinks at her reddened fingertips — but the outside of the stain crusts dark. Fareeha sets the bowl beside Angela on the couch and chews her lip.

“You’ll need a change of clothes, I guess,” she says. “I’ve only got regular stuff though. Not whatever that’s made of.” She gestures to her sturdy, seamless tunic. “Only person I know with one never tells me where I can find some.”

Angela dips her fingertips in the bowl. “Anything warm and soft will do, Fareeha,” she says with a smile.

As a child, Fareeha slept in the small spare room off the main kitchen-slash-living room combo. With space tight, it fit a cot but not a dresser — Fareeha stacked her clothes and toys on shelves along the wall. Since coming of age and enlisting, her childhood cot is gone, and the space taken over by her father’s spare woodworking tools. Fareeha mounts the stairs in search of clothes. It’s not a true second floor, just big enough for a loft bedroom and a proper adult-sized bed — Fareeha deeply doubts she could fit in a cot at current height. She finds a large old sweatshirt from her university stint and flannel pyjama pants with a tie-up waist. Warm and soft and less likely to slip from Angela’s slimmer hips.

Sweater and pyjama pants thrown over one shoulder, Fareeha descends to the main floor.

“Oh, Fareeha,” Angela calls, “Could you help me out?”

Fareeha is instantly glad she fetched the water first. Angela sits, unabashed and with wings limp against her back, topless. Heat rises on Fareeha’s cheeks. She finds a safe spot in the kitchen to fix her gaze.

“Of course,” she responds, “Whatever— whatever you need.”

And then she’s draping the change of clothes over the back of the couch and mentally kicking herself. Disrobed, Fareeha sees each of Angela’s breath shudder through her body. Burnt feathers lie discarded on carpet. Blood seeps through the wet cloth Angela holds to her side. And when she shifts her wings, Fareeha sees the vivid red slash of the burn between Angela’s shoulder blades, glistening raw and angry in the half-light, and an ugly projectile wound near her shoulder. Fareeha’s heart gives a painful squeeze.

Fareeha comes around the couch and settles beside Angela. “Tell me what you need,” she says, “Anything.”

“I’ve survived worse,” she says, “You know we heal fast. My body will return to a tolerable condition by morning.” She lifts her elbow to Fareeha’s first aid kit. “I found bandages, to start, if I could have some help with this?”

Fareeha is never sure of angel immune systems and the potential for infection, so she pulls on latex gloves from the kit, dries the wound — a tear about as large as her own hand — and sterilizes it with alcohol wipes as Angela’s body tenses beside her. As the wound’s still seeping blood, she selects a hydrofiber dressing from the kit and tapes the square firmly over Angela’s side.

Angela gently runs a hand over Fareeha’s work. “Thank you,” she says. “And if you’d help me with my back as well?”

Angela bares her back to her and Fareeha’s throat tightens. She dips a clean cloth in the water and dabs it over the burn. Even through the gloves, the lingering heat rises to kiss Fareeha’s skin. An old scar on her hip and a memory of fire throb in tandem. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

Angela’s voice is tight. “It’s not your fault, Fareeha. You did not do this,” she says. Her arms are wrapped around her front now, digging her nails into her own flesh as Fareeha dabs at the wound again.

Reaching into the first aid kit again, Fareeha comes up with a little tube. “This— this is antimicrobial ointment. It’s going to hurt when I put it on, but it’s got aloe vera or something in it. Feels better after that.”

Fareeha hates this. She hates the sharp, cool medical scent of the ointment and she hates — under the scent of ointment — the cooked meat smell she knows comes from Angela’s flesh. She hates how the heat of the burn presses up against her gloved hand and she hates how Angela’s every shudder vibrates against her palm. She hates how she’s causing this pain. And more than anything else, she hates whoever hurt Angela, the shadowy angel behind all this. Something heavy grips her chest.

Angela interrupts her thoughts. “Fareeha?” she says. “You switched to Arabic again.”

A sharp inhale stings her throat. “Sorry,” Fareeha murmurs.

Angela glances over her shoulder. “Don’t be. I understood.” Her eyes find Fareeha’s. “You were saying sweet things.”

Staring down at Angela’s shoulder blade, she says, “Well, um.” She covers the glossy burn with a light sheet of gauze and tapes down the edges. “I’ve finished— well, I’m done here. Do you want me to help you get dressed or—?” She lets the question hang.

Angela’s blue eyes are still fixed on her. “I’ve already asked so much of you, but could you help me with one more thing?” She bites her lip.

“Of— of course.”

“My wings,” Angela prompts. “Could you pull the ruined feathers?”

Fareeha glances down at the folded mass of feathers.

“I can’t fly with burnt primaries and they won’t regrow until I shed them,” she explains. “I can’t reach them on my own.”

“I think— I think I can do that,” Fareeha says.

She strips the used gloves from her hands and sets them aside. Angela eases her right wing open first and reaches a hand over her shoulder to point to the feathers on the outer edge of her wing, the ones rivalling the length of Fareeha’s arm. “Any ruined ones from here,” she moves her hand, “to here, where the secondaries start.”

Fareeha sucks in a steadying breath. “Okay.”

“You will need to pull them right from the top,” Angela adds.

Less okay. “Am I counting down?” she asks. “Or distracting you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Angela says. “Although I would prefer if you worked with haste.”

“Right.” Fareeha traces the trajectory of the first burnt feather up. She brushes her fingertip along the soft edge of a feather and her hand trembles. _This_ , she thinks, _is borderline sacrilege_ , _I’m sure_. She buries her fingers in the top of the wing and braces them against the flesh below. In her other hand, she grips the base of the feather.

She sets a count down her in her head:

_One—_

_Two—_

_Three—_

Fareeha yanks. Angela gasps. Sluggish blood fills the void between feathers.

Discarding the feather, Fareeha folds her sleeve over her thumb and presses it to the blood.

Angela’s breath comes heavy. Fareeha traces the rise and fall of her ribcage. Tries to ignore the shuddering breaths. She lifts her hand then, and settles it on Angela’s shoulder. “You sure this is necessary?”

She nods; her blond hair dances against the back of her neck. “On second thought, a distraction would be welcome.” She tips a wan smile over her shoulder.

Fareeha begins on the next feather. Unsure of what else to say, she blurts out, “So, I’ve been living in this cabin, in the middle of fuck-off nowhere, for three weeks now,” and yanks the next feather free.

“Why not—” she breaks off in a gasp, “—why not spend time with your father?”

Fareeha has prepared some gauze. She presses it against Angela’s wing. “I just—” she tries. “With Ana’s death, and then her letter _literally five seconds_ before I timed out of the army, I needed time to think.” Fareeha pauses. Angela’s leaning back into the hand on her shoulder again, and her thoughts blur together. “I tried staying in a hotel.”

She continues plucking feathers with decisive strokes and talks about her time at the hotel, the frustrating comfort, the need for self-sufficiency. She details the contents of the letter, plucks feather by feather and settles a hand against Angela’s shoulder. She hopes it’s a comfort, and when Angela leans against her, again and again, she throws another coin in the well of hope in her head. Tonight is tied up in equal measures of suffering and comfort and strangeness, and Fareeha hates how necessary the hurt of it is for healing.

Finally, she flicks the last feather to the floor. “Done.”

Angela folds her wings up and sags back. Her body comes to rest against Fareeha, who sits, hyper aware of Angela’s every weighted, restorative breath and how her skin rests against her arm.

“You’re cold,” she notes, ingeniously. “Do you want to dress now?”

“Help me bind my wing first?” Angela asks. “And then, yes, please.”

Fareeha does as she asks, bracing her fragile, snapped wing to her body as they loop a bandage around Angela’s body to hold it in place. She turns away as Angela eases into the lent clothes. She dreams of Angela, awake and sleeping, all the time. Tonight she’s brushed her fingers to more of Angela than she’s ever dreamed possible, and yet she hates the reason for it.

Behind her, the couch sighs as Angela sinks back in. “What about you, Fareeha?”

“What about me what?”

Angela’s cool fingertips graze a patch of bare skin on her back. “Aren’t you going to change into something with less ventilation?”

Fareeha turns around. “I guess,” she says.

When she comes back from changing into her thickest socks and softest sweat pants and sweater, she finds Angela curled in a neat ball on the couch, eyes half shut. Fareeha moves to drape the afghan over her, and Angela lifts a hand and clutches her shirt.

Lidded blue eyes peer up at her. “Will you stay near, Fareeha?” she bids. “For now?”

“Of course.”

Fareeha sinks into the couch beside her. Angela shifts her weight into Fareeha’s arms, soft and sighing. Fareeha frees one hand long enough to tuck the afghan around them. “You sure you don’t want the bed?” she offers.

Angela looses a deep sigh into her neck; her breath warms Fareeha’s skin. “Please don’t make me move.”

Fareeha doesn’t, never would, and settles her arms around Angela’s torso and her nose into her soft blond hair.

***

Angela dreams of nothing concrete, only the notion of warmth and safety and weightlessness. She wakes in the deepest hour of night in Fareeha’s arms.

She takes stock of her injuries: cuts are scaring and burns are tight and painful to touch, but the relief of their progress ebbs through her.

Fareeha’s breaths come slow and even, her soul soft and humming and at peace. Her head is on Angela’s and the weight of it — the weight of her — is a barrier against the world, against all the responsibilities and little agonies.

And Angela is sick of denying herself that warmth.

Slipping a hand under Fareeha’s shirt, she presses her palm to her ribcage: there is her soul, soft and perfect.

“Fareeha?”

“Hmm?”

“Fareeha,” she insists, and nudges her head a little.

“What’s wrong, Angie?” Fareeha’s voice comes light.

“I thank I want to sleep in the bed now,” she says.

Fareeha pulls in a wakeful breath. “Alright, yeah, okay,” her voice is clearer.

With a careful hand on the small of Angela’s back, Fareeha guides her toward the stairs and up into the loft, then the bed lies before them. She pulls back the sheets, and then stifles a yawn with the back of her hand.

Angela crawls in one side and holds out a hand. “You, too Fareeha,” she says.

“Oh,” Fareeha gives a sleepy blink, “Okay.”

She climbs in beside Angela and pulls the sheets over both of them. Angela curls in close, Fareeha’s face opposite hers, their noses touching. She reaches a hand under the sheets, under Fareeha’s shirt, and rests it over her ribs again. A warm smile touches the edges of Fareeha’s lips and she drapes a warm arm likewise over Angela’s waist.

Angela presses her forehead against Fareeha’s. “I said something once,” she begins, “Something I regret. I said it because I thought it was best, or rather, because I thought it was most important to follow those guidelines.” She pauses. “But those things… change. They don’t allot me the same treatment. I see what’s important now.”

Fareeha’s forehead crinkles in a frown. “Are you feverish?” She shifts and brushes her lips to Angela’s forehead. “No?”

Angela shifts the hand against Fareeha’s skin a little higher, and Fareeha breathes in sharply. “I’m saying I feel safest in the presence of your soul. With you. That’s unchanging. That’s what gives back,” she fumbles.

“Oh,” Fareeha says, “I think I see.” She tips her head in and her lips meet Angela’s. It’s so unlike their first kiss, hard and desperate, under the hard sun and soaked in blood. It’s still filled with the same warmth, but it reflects their surroundings: warm, soft. Fareeha pulls back again. “That?”

Soft heat blossoms through Angela’s body. “Yes,” she manages, “That.”

Fareeha laughs, mouth almost against hers, and then she’s kissing Angela again. Traces of sleep fade, and the kiss is wakeful and attentive. Angela’s hands drift further up along Fareeha’s skin and Fareeha’s hands find their way to Angela’s, then kisses and hands drift

down,

down,

_down—_

After, as the night slips to the earliest hours of the morning, Angela drifts back to sleep, her skin warm against Fareeha’s.

***

Fareeha wakes alone, the warm impression of Angela’s body cooling on the bed beside her.

The glory of the night drops away. Stupid, Fareeha berates herself, because she knows: _Angela always leaves._

She jerks out of bed and tugs on whatever clothes are in reach. Her heart kicks up a fearful beat. Fumbling down the loft stairs, she finds Angela, in last night’s borrowed clothes, fussing over the teapot.

“I thought I’d give breakfast a try,” she gives the teapot a meaningful slosh.

Fareeha presses a hand to her chest. Her heart staggers to a regular rate. “I thought you’d left,” she admits.

A small, sad smile touches Angela’s face. “I’ll have to leave eventually Fareeha,” she admits. Her hands clutch the teapot. “I still have responsibilities. That poor woman is still being used. And it’s not safe—”

Fareeha cuts in. “But it is safe. Since you spelled the outside. Right?” she asks.

Angela looks up. “The sigils block angels from sensing any lifeforce within,” she explains.

“So it’s safe here now,” Fareeha insists. “You can come back.”

Talking more to the teapot than Fareeha, Angela says, “But I wouldn’t be able to feel you.”

“Feel me?” she questions.

Angela sets the teapot down and leans up against Fareeha. Her hands find their way under her shirt again, up against Fareeha’s ribcage. “Ever since we met, I can feel your soul.” She pauses, and Fareeha sees pink colour Angela’s cheeks. “I rather like it.”

_Oh._

Fareeha wraps both arms around Angela and held her close, buries her face in Angela’s neck. “But Ange,” she says, “I’m out of the service. I won’t be all over the place anymore. I can be here. I can stay here.” She pulls back to meet Angela’s eyes. “You can come back and feel my soul anytime you want. It can be a safe place. Our place.”

Angela smiles up at her. “Our place?”

Fareeha nods once and then draws her close again. “You can come back next week. Or six months from now. Or six years from now,” she says, “And I’ll be here.”

Muffled into Fareeha’s shirt, where she nuzzles her face into, Angela whispers, “I think I like the sound of that.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to the artists I worked with and their awesome work!
> 
> 1\. [Fareeha finding Angela in the forest](http://pennycatss.tumblr.com/post/182980816315/a-scene-from-a-place-of-permanence-by) by pennycatss on tumblr  
> 2\. [Angela and Fareeha's first meeting](http://itarasi.tumblr.com/post/182834393277/heres-my-piece-for-the-2019-overwatch-femslash) by itarasi on tumblr  
> 3\. [Fareeha tending to Angela's wounds](http://fareexa.tumblr.com/post/182815186183/my-piece-for-owfemslashbigbang-i-was-so-honored) by fareexa on tumblr 
> 
> I'm secondreckoning on tumblr/fourthsecond on twitter!


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